Defying Perfection
by comtria
Summary: After a hard week, Elizabeth confronts herself at her darkest hour, questioning who she really is. All she wants is someone that can relate to her. She finds that someone in Rodney McKay.


It was one of those rare days when Elizabeth Weir had grown tired of being herself.

She was tired of being perfect. She was tired of her desperate justifications for apparent mistakes – and tired of her subordinates _buying into them_, for God's sake. She was tired of her impenetrable persona that seemed to simultaneously entice and intimidate everyone she knew, obliterating any possibility of tunneling through the politically correct small talk in search of a real conversation.

Mostly, she was just tired.

Insomnia and overworking were common afflictions on Atlantis, obviously, although Elizabeth epitomized them, to the point where she was expected to work overtime – no, more than overtime. If she was caught deliberating for even a moment, staring wistfully out of a window or taking a bit too long to finish lunch, she was bombarded by the playful comments, "Oh, I see you're slacking today!" or "Must be your one day off per year." And she had brought it on herself.

The past week she had been fighting off some sort of illness, waking up early to mask her pale skin with makeup when she wished she could stay wrapped in her sheets forever, sipping desperately at coffee as she tried to make sense of mission reports, then compensating for her lack of concentration by working into the night to unscramble the oversights she had made earlier in the day. It was amazing how much complete silence bothered her to the point that it made her productive. She had no excuse not to work now. She couldn't listen in on a conversation in the gate room or even the rustling of the winds against the tides, which always died down at sunset. Tiredness gave way to numbness, and eventually synthesized itself into focus.

But now it all toppled down on her. This was too much. She had been breaking down one particularly tedious recon mission report and typing key points into Excel, cross-referencing it with other mission reports and highlighting commonalities, and noting effective strategies and potential resolutions. Normally nothing out of the ordinary, this report was beginning to eat at her more and more, until she noticed her cheeks growing hot with anger. Not only were there misspelled words galore (including her own name – _it's E – I, not I – E!_ she wanted to scream at no one in particular), but implications about the social hierarchy and "inferior races" on one planet made her want to tear the paper apart. She didn't know whether to laugh, scream, or call in the offending lieutenant, rousing him from his bed at three in the morning and firing him in a spectacular show of wrath. How good it would feel to lose control completely.

Instead she calmly walked out onto the balcony and released every breath of air from her chest into the comfortingly warm night air. She couldn't even be herself around herself – and what was she anymore, anyway? She was so wrapped up in the notion of being a leader that she couldn't even admit to herself that she was human anymore. She couldn't confess to herself that she was sick, she had a fever, her throat tickled, and she wanted to be in bed. No, _needed_ to be in bed. Needed to sleep. Needed to take a day off, or more than a day off.

And there was more, she conceded. I want to eat food to enjoy it, not just because I can feel my body breaking itself down in an attempt to survive. I want to read a book that isn't research. I want to send an e-mail that isn't for work. I want to – hell, take a vacation and not show my diplomat passport this time. Not fear for my goddamn life because I'm on the wrong side of some concrete wall.

She could chuckle at herself because she could find humor in the fact that she worked so hard. She loved this place and would do anything to protect it. She loved welcoming the off-world teams back in the gate room, seeing them all in one piece, smiling, accomplished, knowing that she was an integral part of their success. She could smile because it all meant something.

But for some reason, the dark clouds began to slink over her. _Maybe I should have just gone to bed_, Elizabeth thought to herself. It had been too long since she had allowed herself to get to this point, and she didn't want to be there again. It was deeper than questioning herself, it was knowing the answer and knowing there was nothing she could do about it, because she was wrapped too snugly in those un-truths to unravel them and feel the sting of the inevitable.

The one thing she was lacking was the one thing she could not create: for someone to hear her. She was afraid of reaching out to others because other people were unpredictable. She couldn't control them or mold them into the functions she needed them to fulfill as she had molded herself into a stoic, impeccably controlled machine. Dealing with other people was always a gamble, one she could find thrill in but only from afar. Being the leader of the Atlantis expedition meant she could move those under her around like chess pieces, applying strategy to otherwise irrational situations. She couldn't determine each move they made, but she could limit their movements to designated spheres, and that was as much as anyone could ask for. Being a leader came with a price, though: Elizabeth was detached from the everyday, following a different set of expectations that allowed no noticeable fallibility. She had to be the invisible force behind the success rather than a participant in it. She couldn't throw the dice; she could only hand them off to others. _They_ scrabbled the fates. She put them in order again.

This set of regulations was of no use when she felt the desperate need to collapse and cry. She had thought of talking to Dr. Heightmeyer many times, but each time waved it off just as abruptly as the thought had descended on her. Even though she knew that no one else would have to know, and that she wasn't really depressed or unstable or abnormal, she just wanted to talk to another person, she couldn't shake the stigma of confiding in a person whose job it was to scrutinize her every musing.

She had put her trust in others, on rare occasions, but always concealed something fundamental. Everything had to be for a greater cause. If anyone had ever caused her to feel uncomfortable, she couldn't bring herself to tell them unless it was under the guise of sabotaging a peace agreement or some other issue outside of her. No one could take advantage of her only because they had never seen who she was, behind that mask she had shaped for ages until she couldn't even recognize herself.

That was when she caught his figure out of the corner of her eye. All those times she had imagined she would turn around and find someone standing there, someone who would simply listen – and it was Rodney McKay. He stood in the doorway of her office, the shadows falling sharply over his curious brow. "Elizabeth?" he spat out. "What are you doing awake?"

Elizabeth instantly gathered herself into a full standing position and approached Rodney with one eyebrow raised. "What are you doing in my office?" she retorted.

"Well ah, I was just on my way to get a little snack, and, you know, I noticed that you were out here." He casually flicked his wrist in the direction of the mess hall. "You want to share my bag of M & M's? They're Christmas edition."

"It's August," Elizabeth pointed out.

Then something happened that had never happened before: she caught herself off-guard. And suddenly she was crying. Or sobbing hysterically, as it were. It had to have been the combination of Rodney's nearly pathetic attempt to get her to eat expired chocolate with him at this ungodly hour and having been interrupted during her deepest reflections by the member of her team most known for his lack of tact. As if she couldn't kick herself hard enough

Rodney surprised her, though, by kicking into heroic mode. "Oh, God, Elizabeth, did I say something wrong?" he asked, and brought her into an awkward hug.

It felt nice to feel the warmth of another person, as strange a situation as this was. Elizabeth tore her hands away from her eyes with a surrendering sniffle and wrapped them around Rodney's neck, resting her head on his chest to feel his heart beating through his soft t-shirt. "I know this sounds silly," she croaked, her voice muffled by the fabric, "but can we just stand here for a second?"

"Okay?" Rodney agreed. He brought his hand to her head and patted it in an attempt to comfort her.

After a minute Elizabeth backed away from Rodney, and forced herself to bring her face even with his and give him a watery smile. "Thank you, Rodney," she said.

Maybe it was because he was embarrassed himself, but Rodney seemed to brush off everything that had just happened, instead persisting with "How about those M & M's, then?"

"Right," Elizabeth laughed.

In the brightness of the mess hall Elizabeth seated herself across from Rodney, who doled out the red and green candies between the two of them, popping his portion eagerly into his mouth. "Mm. Perfect midnight snack," he remarked through bites.

"You know," said Elizabeth, trying to forgive herself for her earlier transgression, "you never seemed to be concerned about people before, but you...it meant a lot to me, Rodney."

"Oh yeah?" Rodney disinterestedly sneaked one of Elizabeth's M & M's into his mouth.

She saw it all, now. He, too, was a bit like her. The allergy claims, the drive to look better than everyone else, were all subtle ways to express the feelings that Rodney couldn't quite come to terms with. He hid his true vulnerability within the exaggerated flaws he chose to show others, so no one could ever come too close.

"I appreciate you trying to placate me, Rodney, but really," Elizabeth placed her hand on top of his, hovering over the last of her candy, "sometimes I just want to talk to someone. Don't you ever feel like that?"

She could have chosen to have this discussion with any other member of the Atlantis expedition, and she was sure they would feel similarly. But she had a feeling that Rodney would lay it all out on the table. He was a scientist. His M.O. was to get at the truth. That was the only thing she craved right now.

"I don't know if I'm the one you should be talking to," he said.

"No." Elizabeth shook her head and let her eyes wander back to those days she had spent the last twenty years trying to forget. "I made blueberry crepes for my mom on Mother's Day when I was fifteen."

Rodney paused in the middle of chewing, scrutinizing Elizabeth's unexpected words.

"I worked so hard on them. I got up so early to make sure they were perfect." Elizabeth brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and looked Rodney in the eyes again. "I arranged them on a tray with juice and flowers and a card I had made myself. Then, when I was about to take it to her room to surprise her, I heard a noise behind me, and I turned around and dropped the tray. The juice spilled everywhere, the crepes were ruined, the flowers were smashed. And the noise I had heard was my own mother, coming to see what the commotion was in the kitchen." She couldn't help letting out an ironic groan. "I was so upset. It was supposed to be the best Mother's Day ever, but all I remember is crying into my mother's arms as I sat on the floor and tried to clean up the mess I'd made, and her stroking my hair. I thought she was angry at me. It took me years to realize that she wasn't angry at all, but it didn't matter. From that day on I swore to be perfect at everything. I swore to stop making mistakes."

"That's – that's so _you_," said Rodney.

Elizabeth blinked in surprise. "You honestly see me that way?"

"Yeah, well, we all do," he told her. "We kind of look at you as a sweet little girl who just wants to do her best in the big mean world of politics and bad guys."

"Huh. Well." For once Elizabeth couldn't think of a stock courtesy answer.

"Hey, it's all right to admit it. We all came to Atlantis to run away from something." Rodney shrugged and held out the last M & M as a peace offering. Elizabeth took it and popped it into her mouth with a grin, biting into it as slowly as she could so she could taste every bit of it.

She had spent so long running away that she had forgotten what it felt like to be home again. If only for a moment, she could allow herself to be that fifteen-year-old, and she gave herself permission to fail, in the shelter of Rodney's understanding. He smiled, smacked the table with finality, and announced, "What do you say, bedtime?"

Elizabeth's hand hovered a moment over her alarm clock as she curled between her bed sheets before she unplugged it and slapped it onto the floor. The others would forgive her if she overslept. She was only human, after all.


End file.
